Driving in traffic the other day I was trying to name all of the instant warning signs on seeing another driver that will cause me grief on my drive. I know it's not a true mathematical representation but I thought it might be fun to present my findings like the Drake Equation, the equation designed to calculate the number of extaterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

When I was a kid, before anything electrical was thrown away, I was given the opportunity to tear it apart with a screw driver: alarm clocks, cassette decks, record players, VCRs and appliances. I realized that my own kids haven't had that kind of experience. Everything is composed of integrated circuits these days. If you tore apart a modern day alarm clock you'd end up with a circuit board and an LCD. Boring. Crack open the iPod your sister ran through the washing machine? A circuit board and a battery. Yawn.

Comcast has been ratcheting up our monthly cable bill for a long time now, pushing the bill for our cable up to over $100 a month! We only have 1 cable box with HD programming, but we have 3 others doing standard def. We have no extended packages such as HBO, ESPN or otherwise, just regular, HD cable. We found out that there was some strange clause that allowed them to enable or continue features we weren't using or even interested in. In any case we have had it with their shinanigans and outrageous prices.

For my 40th birthday, Jenn bought me a surprise tandem skydiving adventure! However, due to weather, the actual jump would have to occur a week later than planned. I've always wanted to jump out of an airplane, despite my fear of heights, so I looked forward to doing it.

Sweet! Our new XBMC box is online. It automatically downloads our TV shows from Usenet (yeah, it's still around, apparently) sort of like a DVR without needing a cable hookup. It even speaks UPNP with our Mythtv box so we can use the XBMC box it to watch stuff we DVR'd with the Mythtv box. Might eventually merge the two so I'm not running two PC's in the living room, but I'm afraid to touch the myth box after 4 years of off-and-on hackery.